SPECIAL SESSION: Using Mentorship & Coaching to Develop Nurse Leaders

Description/Overview: Health system leaders work to adapt to political and economic challenges and technological advances while attending to expectations of managing quality care and work environments. Increasingly, employees in all healthcare sectors assess their current and potential workplaces according to the value that organizations place on respect, balance and meaning in work. Effective leaders demonstrate competence through empowering behaviours, responding with understanding and communicating empathy. In the current environment, healthcare leaders must embrace change and seek out opportunities to develop and enhance their leadership skills; often through management education. Coaching skills, as a leadership development tool, is valuable nursing and can be developed. Effective coaches can develop trusting relationships with employees that ultimately leads to professional and performance growth. In a scoping review of coaching frameworks, Carey et al. (2011) identified 5 common elements of successful coaching frameworks: relationship building, problem-defining, problem-solving, goal setting, and transformation based on action. Individuals who participate in professional coach training gain skills to meet their professional goals and to improve performance at both individual and organizational levels (Brady Germain & Cummings, 2010). The Coaching for Impressive Care (C.F.I.C.) program, developed by the Institute for Healthcare Communication (IHC; www.healthcarecomm.org) to instruct leaders in methods of coaching staff performance, specifically, to coach staff to effectively address the complex needs of individual they are for. Developed to complement the Treating Patients with CARE program (C.A.R.E.), the Coaching for Impressive Care program focuses on training leaders to interact with staff is effectively support the use of C.A.R.E (Cummings et al., 2013). C.A.R.E skills include: Connecting, Appreciating (empathizing), Responding and Empowering. In this session, key elements of executive coaching programs and the Coaching for Impressive Care program are integrated to the health care and nursing setting to offer participants an overview of how to become a coach, along with specific application of principles and learnings.